EAT YOUR HEART OUT PARTRIDGE FAMILY, IT WAS OUR IDEA FIRST

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   In the late fall of 1964 my dad bought a bus.  A full six years before the first episode of ABC’s The Partridge Family aired, my family acquired a bus of the forty five passenger variety. In 1964, the world had yet to discover the delights of wearing psychedelic goggles, but there we were, unwitting trend setters. Our bus, while not being as colorful as the Family Partridge’s vehicle, was no less buss-ey, cool, or hip.  I say that now, let’s keep in mind I was thirteen years old at the time.

 After a seven year run in Austin, Texas, just prior to the start of my seventh grade year, we left Texas for the more northern climes of St. Paul, Minnesota.  My dad was born in St. Paul as was his father in 1889. My brother and I were also born there, and my mother went to college at the same institution that had hired my dad, so in a way, we were coming home. My memories of the city were limited to the visits we had made to visit my grandparents and there was certainly no familiarity for me in the wide busy streets, shaded by elms, whose branches created a cathedral of green arches as we drove in.  

  Life in a city far from the open spaces and infinite skies of the Lone Star State.  As far as I was concerned, Minnesota might as well have been another planet.  It certainly had no resemblance to Texas other than the sun rose in the east and set in the west, though at the beginning of our residency in St. Paul I would probably have said even that fact was debatable.  One notable difference was that it was cold -very cold. Both my wardrobe and I were used to hot weather and had rolled into town without a plan B.  My cotton skirts and blouses, in various bright hues, inspired by a South of the Border ethos clashed with the navy, burgundy and olive green wool that was popular at my new school.  I learned the hard way that a new type of personal classification was bestowed by the students and used to judge every newcomer.

   There were two categories of people. One could be a Greaser or a Baldie. There was no third option - - no ‘New From Texas Still Wearing Flip-Flops’ box that could be checked off.   Being a Greaser meant wearing black mixed with bright colors, drain pipe jeans, hair spray, or slicked-back long hair for boys.  I wasn’t exactly a Greaser, though my bright clothing made my classmates suspicious of my true tendencies.  The desirable classification I soon discovered meant being a Baldie.  Baldies wore madras plaid in burgundy, dark green or navy - - and whether or not your madras bled in the wash was the mark of authenticity. “Bleeding” madras was the fine point, the dot on the I. Non bleeding madras was a fake. No pink or cerulean blue please. The authorized colors were no less rigid than the uniforms that the good Catholic Sisters made my Texas friend Pat wear at St. Austin Elementary. White or beige Levis, Gant oxford cloth shirts, and v-necked wool sweaters in the acceptable colors were the required wardrobe. If you were a girl you could wear either knee socks or hosiery.

   Being at an awkward age, I felt my differences acutely.  The 7^th graders of my generation were no less judgmental or cliquish than they are today. My classmates at my new school viewed me as an alien creature as if I had come from another planet and were not above bullying, and publicly pointing out the many ways that I was different. I talked funny, wore weird clothing, and then - - oh yes - - then there was my family - - specifically, my dad.

  Our house occupied a highly visible and large lot on the busy corner of St. Clair and Macalester Street.  It was a gray and white two-story, possessed of four bedrooms, which meant that for the first time I occupied a bedroom by myself, no longer having to share with either my brother or my sister.  As a bonus feature my room on the second floor had an attached sun porch directly over another sun porch that served as my dad’s office.

  My father spent a lot of time in his office, writing, reading, planning his classes and apparently thinking scholarly and highly creative thoughts.  During the fall and winter of 1964 he must have decided that his academic work wasn’t enough.  He required a hobby.  

  His first project was to build a small ice rink in the back yard so my brother could learn the ins and outs of hockey.  (Hockey is to Minnesota as basketball is to Indiana or football to Ohio or Texas.  It is everything.)  And, since my dad was a Minnesota boy born and bred, he wanted to be sure my brother had the necessary skills to play the state religion.

  The hockey rink wasn’t too out of step - - not that very many other kids had hockey rinks in their yards, but at least among the male athletic set it was a socially acceptable way to spend one’s free time.  My dad and my brother worked for several weekends, digging out the yard, creating a space about ten feet wide, four inches deep and twenty feet long surrounded on all sides by 2X6’s.  On a mid November night when the temperature was expected to drop into the single digits, they filled the rectangle with water and voilá, by morning we were Stanley Cup ready. 

 Possessing an at home practice rink was enough to make my brother who was the new kid in fourth grade also the popular kid in fourth grade.  The rest of the winter our backyard was full of little boys running over each other on ice skates as they practiced their puck management.

  The hockey rink completed and my brother occupied for the rest of the winter, my dad began to cast about looking for a new way to spend his time.  One day in early December I arrived home from school to see a school bus parked in the back yard.  I stopped dead in the driveway, my jaw on the ground, to stare at this unexpected vision.  It was bright yellow-orange with St. Paul Public Schools in enormous black letters written on the side. 

  I cocked my head examining the bus.  Where it had come from was a mystery.  My Junior High School was a neighborhood school. No buses ferried students back and forth - - the building being within easy walking distance for every student in the district.  Nor did the elementary school where my brother attended require buses.  I slowly circled around the enormous vehicle taking it in.  I pulled off my mitten and ran my fingers across the chrome Ford logo, thinking it odd that the same company that had produced that snappy new little sports car, the Mustang earlier that spring had also created this large yellow monstrosity.  There were tire tracks in the snow in the driveway so it was evident that it had been driven to its current parking spot.  It definitely had not appeared there by magic.

  “Hey,” I called as I cleared the back door and bounded up the two steps from the landing into the kitchen. I dumped my books on the shelf over the radiator that ran alongside the stove. The kitchen was small, paneled with warm knotty pine wainscoting.  It wasn’t large enough for a table, a two butt kitchen my mother referred to it, but I liked pulling a stool up close to the radiator to read or do homework. A small dishwasher was tucked in next to the sink. It was the first house I had ever lived in that had that modern marvel. Before living in this house, I had been the dishwasher.  Now I was the dish loader. Creamy yellow paint glowed off the walls like softened butter in the late afternoon sunlight.  “Hey,” I tried again. “There’s a school bus in the back yard.  Did anybody around here notice that?” 

   “Oh, yes, your father drove it home this morning.”  My mother’s voice drifted in from the next room.  I wandered into the dining room to see that her attention was concentrated on a small table top upon which she was arranging mosaic tiles, her cigarette lay close at hand, doing a slow burn in the ash tray.   Blue smoke curled around my mom’s head crowning her with an opaque tiara.

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of strange to have a school bus in the back yard?  It wasn’t there when I left for school this morning.  It’s not ours is it?  What’s he going to do with it?”

  “Mmmhmm,” my mother responded, pushing her small tiles around in a more pleasing pattern.  “What do you think - - do you like the yellow here?”  She turned around to look at me, her tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of her nose.  “Should the yellow or turquoise go here?”  She poked the tiles around, lining them up.

  “Mom! There’s a school bus in the back yard!” My voice slid up the scale an octave as I attempted to make my point. “We live in a house on a busy corner. Everyone walks by our house. Everyone can see a school bus in the back yard!  What are they going to think?”  As if my life wasn’t rough enough, who else in the known universe had a school bus parked in all its banana yellow glory in their back yard in the middle of the largest city in Minnesota?

  “Oh, pooh,” my mother waved her hand in dismissal of my panic.  “No one will even notice. It’s your father’s latest project.  He said something about taking trips in it. I don’t know.  Go on now, do your homework.”

  What?!! That bus actually belonged to us? It was going to stay there? In that spot in our back yard?  I was mortified.  No doubt I would soon be the subject of a slam book, if I wasn’t already - - those vicious pocket sized spiral notebooks in which questions about a person were written on each page for the readers to answer anonymously and often with all the vitriol of sulphuric acid. To be the subject of a slam book meant social ostracism.  My life was over, I might as well join a convent.

***

  When Saturday rolled around my dad was up early making breakfast.  He whistled as he stirred the corn meal mush, his Saturday morning specialty. 

  “Hey Chicken Little, glad to see you are up?” I winced at the use of my childhood pet name. Surely I was old enough not to be called Chicken Little any more. Unaware of my newly acquired maturity, my dad spooned the cornmeal into a bowl and shoved a carton of milk across the table in my direction. I took the cover off the sugar bowl, and loaded my spoon. I dumped the sugar into the steaming bowl and reached for the milk.

    “Want to run errands with me?”  He pulled out a chair, put his own bowl and a cup of coffee down and settled in across the table.

   “Umm, sure.  Where are we going?” I stuck my spoon in the middle of my cornmeal and created a hole, watching intently as the milk ran into the hole.  Happy with my preparations, I scooped up some of the golden goodness.  It tasted just the way I liked it, thick and sweet.

  “I thought we would run over to Montgomery Wards.  I ordered bunks to put into the bus. They came in.”  He stirred a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee, the steam rising in a brief flare of vapor that dissipated instantly as it rose towards the ceiling.

  My hand, wrapped around my spoon froze, halfway to my mouth.  “What?  Bunks?  Like beds bunks?”

  “Yup.”  My dad nodded happily.  “If we are going to camp in it, it needs bunks.”

  “We are going to camp in it? In that bus out back?”  I was amazed that my voice sounded so reasonable.  My brain was screaming, “No, no, no!  We can’t drive around and live in that! Everyone already thinks I am some kind of freak!”

  “I’m going to start ripping the seats out this weekend. We will also have to have a table of course.  I‘ll save some seats to bolt in so that they are facing the table.  I think it will be fun. You guys can play cards or board games while we travel.  I have to measure carefully to be sure to make room for the bunks - - two on each side I think…”

  He prattled on detailing his construction plans as I tried to wrap my head around the concept. A school bus we would live in!  My attention snapped back to laser focus once again when my dad uttered this phrase:

  “And of course I have to build a shower stall type structure for the toilet.”

   A toilet!!??  This rolling house of horrors was going to have a toilet?

  “Won’t that make it stink inside?”  I cringed at the thought.  My social life, what little there was of it was going to go down the drain, or toilet whichever you prefer.

  “Oh well, we will empty it before we hit the road every morning. We will make our soda pop stops as usual.  But Jon won’t have to cross his legs anymore every time he drinks one.”  My dad chuckled at the thought of my brother who had a bladder the size of a black eyed pea.  If he was away from easy access to a bathroom he had to go, constantly.

  “Gross, Dad. He can wait until we find a clean restroom.”

  My father set down his cup and ruffled my hair.  “No reason to make him do that anymore. It will be fine.”

  It will be fine. A phrase I employed raising my own children and continue to tell them to this day. That phrase will no doubt be carved upon my tombstone.  It will be fine is such an innocuous little figure of speech, suggesting that the solution to your particular problem will present itself momentarily.  I shuddered.  There was no solution for this.  I was going to spend the summer riding around in a school bus with a portable toilet stinking and sloshing just off the main aisle.  The guarantee of horrendous embarrassment was complete, and at the hands of my own father. How would I ever explain this to the kids at school?  I looked at my breakfast.  All of a sudden I wasn’t hungry any more.

***

  The third week of June we boarded the bus, and headed southwest. The interior of this predecessor of the motor home was not lavish.  Four bunks were affixed to the walls of the vehicle, covered with olive drab wool army blankets, two on either side.  My five-year-old sister had an army grade air mattress that was made up into a bed each night and placed upon one of the remaining green vinyl seats at the front of the bus.  Towards the back a table was bolted to the floor. My dad had taken seats out and secured them facing each side of the table. On the other side of the aisle he had created a small counter top out of plywood with a hole to place a dish pan which sat inside the hole.  He had covered the makeshift counter with vinyl for a waterproof surface. The countertop was skirted to conceal shelves underneath for various kitchen needs such as sponges and dish soap. A kerosene stove was folded and sat on one side of the counter, ready to be pulled out and used when we stopped for the night.  Towards the front of the bus next to the bunks was a shower stall sized area that served as the bathroom.  Again my father had affixed a plywood type bench with a hole cut out.  He attached a toilet seat to the bench.  A heavy duty garbage bag was placed in a tall plastic bucket under the toilet seat.  We didn’t use our makeshift toilet much, but it was useful at campgrounds at night and during long stretches of uninhabited road in Oklahoma and Texas.  My mother was handy with a sewing machine and had made curtains for the windows that ran across our sleeping area and the back window of the bus. At night we could pull the curtains shut, turn on the kerosene lamps and play a game of hearts secure from prying eyes.  A curtain could be drawn across the front part of the vehicle to block a view from the windshield.

   The bus was not a speedy vehicle, it topped out about 55 miles per hour which restricted our travel to the state roads and old US highways.  My mother eschewed the modern marvel of the interstate high system as a waste since you couldn’t see the country going sixty- five miles per hour.  The magnificence of the United States was revealed along the two lanes and small towns they ran through.  She always served as navigator and chose the route to pass through as many colorfully named towns as she could determine from hours of perusing the map pre-trip.  She was no doubt as scrupulous as any pilot filing a flight plan as she wrote out  the potential itinerary, attempting to take in as many historical sites and spots of local color as she could find. Historical markers were a special treat and we made it our business to stop at every one we came across, read the information, and run around like maniacs before my dad honked the horn and opened the folding doors letting us know it was time to depart.  If there was a statue of a giant cheese, an ancient Indian Cavern, or scenic view, we stopped to take in the sight.

   Our journey took us through southern Minnesota which is indeed the land of 10,000 lakes so there was always a public beach where we could picnic and dangle our toes off the pier in a clear lake or park for the night.   Despite my worst fears of being labeled as “queer” the strongest pejorative insult of the day, (and one that I thought meant 'different' not being particularly schooled in the language of hate) travel by bus was much less cramped than travel by car. The ability to get up and run up and down the aisle appealed to my little sister who was not one to sit still for long stretches of time. The dog too enjoyed this mode of travel, lounging on one of the seats that my father had left at the front of the bus watching the world roll by out of the window.  Every night one of us would be handed a wad of paper towel to clean off the nose prints and dried doggie drool left on the glass.  Having bunks available for a nap or to curl up in to read a book was a nice feature that I had not fully appreciated before we hit the road that summer.

  The first stop of consequence was a state park in Iowa.  The skies had been overcast the entire day as we traveled south. That night, the clouds let loose; water ran over the windows and pounded off the roof throughout the evening hours.  I lay in my bunk feeling pretty smart. We weren’t in a tent soaked and miserable.  

  The next morning when the engine roared to life and my dad put the bus in gear the big tires did nothing more than spin in the mud, clots of black dirt splattering the rear windows.

  “Uh-oh,” my brother the family worry wart commented.

  “Are we stuck, Daddy?” I leaned forward in my seat as if peering out the windshield would shed light on the situation.

  “We appear to be,” my dad’s response was clipped as he rocked the bus back and forth trying to get traction.

  “Let’s go!  Hit the road!”  My sister squeaked from her bunk where she had her stuffed toys arrayed around her in a reading circle.

  My dad opened the folding doors and alit to assess the situation. Rain dripped down the windows. 

  My brother cleared his throat.  Throat clearing had become his latest nervous tick and he drove us crazy with constant e-hems.  My mother defended this mannerism as a consequence of sensitivity or allergies or possibly both and we should all shut up about it. I thought he was trying to be annoying.

“How bad is it?”  My mother peeled back the foil of her cigarette pack, and tapped the side as a smooth white cylinder slid out.

 “Bad, enough, Betty. We aren’t going to get out of this by ourselves.  I wonder how long it will take a tow truck to get out here,” my dad mused aloud.  “Better go find a phone first.”  He turned as he heard a vehicle sloshing down the muddy road.  An International Harvester four wheeled drive vehicle was approaching.  My dad stepped into the water soaked track and waved the truck down.

  “Would you happen to be going to town?”  My dad asked the driver.  “I’m pretty well stuck.  If you could get to a phone and call a tow truck I would be grateful.”

  The driver of the Harvester got out and walked around the bus with my dad.  “Interesting,” he observed.  “How is this arrangement working for you?”

  “Well enough until right now,” my father responded.

  The man ambled over to his truck and lifted the tailgate.  “Tell you what, I have some tow chains. Let’s see if I can pull you out.”

  After an hour of incremental progress, much engine gunning, and mud churning we were back on the road.

  “Whew! I thought we would be stuck there forever,” my brother commented, clearing his throat, the relief evident in his voice.

  “Not forever, son, things dry out sooner or later,” my dad joked. Still it was good to be heading south again.

  Our journey continued uneventfully and life on the road began to fall into a pattern. When settling in our camping spot for the night, we created a patio of lawn chairs encircling a grill which served as the living room for the evening.  From there we could branch out and explore the area, lured back at dusk by the scent of sizzling burgers. If we had the space we set up our croquet set so my mother could indulge herself in her favorite sport, at which she reigned as the supreme champion. Nothing pleased her more than beating the pants off little kids.

  We carried kerosene lamps which lit the interior of the bus so card games and board games were available if the weather was wet. Coloring books and puzzles were stashed under the seats for my sister’s amusement 

  After a week on the road we rolled into Austin a year after we had left.  I had thought I would be elated to return home, but it didn’t feel the same.  We spent the better part of a week visiting old friends, picnicking, and recreating in our old haunts, but I realized after being gone only a year, that Texas wasn’t home any more.  The place for which I had ached for the previous terrible twelve months was a place I no longer fit in. To my surprise, I began to look forward to the trip back to the Twin Cities, Sunday dinners with my grandparents, and two or three good friends I had made. After enduring a year of constant embarrassment, I realized, travel by bus was kind of cool.